NYCC: Avengers: Shattered Heroes Panel

Share.

What's next for the Avengers line?

By Joey Esposito

Marvel's Avengers: Shattered Heroes panel kicked off the big comic book events of Saturday at New York Comic-Con 2011, with a jam-packed panel consisting of Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, Christos Gage, Chris Yost, CB Cebulski, Tom Brevoort and Axel Alonso. The discussion began by running through the teases of Fear Itself's Point One issues, summing up the previously released information and showing off the covers. Fraction did offer this hilarious nugget: "You also get to see Tony Stark sitting on a roof eating a sandwich."

The panel touched briefly on the upcoming bi-weekly series Fear Itself: The Fearless, showing off some nifty new images of Sin and Valkyrie looking ready to beat stuff up. Cebulski was quick to point out how stellar Scot Eaton's artwork had become on the series, saying he's taken his game to the next level.

Next up was Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson's Defenders, which Fraction described as a book heavy on ancient threats and ancient conspiracies. Fraction boldly claimed that the book will help readers understand "why everything that has happened in the Marvel Universe has happened." He continued, "Hulk needs help and he goes to the last people he can trust, on his way to Jason Aaron and Marc Silvestri's Hulk book. It's a new kind of storytelling for me and a new kind of storytelling for Terry. Everything we know and love about the Marvel Universe in one big book." He made a point of how each member of the team covers a distinctly different portion of the Marvel Universe, covering all the bases from street-level to cosmic. He teased that readers should keep an eye out for a small but exciting cameo in issue #1.

Marvel then unleashed connecting variant covers for Avengers: X-Sanction by Leinel Yu. While the information given wasn't any different from what we previously reported, Brevoort called the book "the first brick in a journey that will take us through 2012." He continued to say that Cable was never really dead, but returning from the time stream with a mission. "24 hours to wipe the Avenger's names from history or bad things will happen." Pretty ambiguous, but an engaging hook nonetheless.

Before moving onto talking about Secret Avengers, Marvel revealed that Storm would be joining the Avengers in January, starting in Avengers #21. Secret Avengers is being taken over by Rick Remender with issue #21.1 (with art by Patrick Zircher) and Gabriel Hardman comes on board as ongoing artist with issue #22. Marvel showed off one of their patented silhouette teasers that didn't reveal everybody, but offered some inkling of the new team lineup: Black Widow, Captain Britain, Hawkeye, Beast, and three silhouettes. Brevoort said the book will have "the best qualities of X-Force but in an Avengers lineup."

And something that fans will be super pumped for: the Avengers Academy is meeting the Runaways in issue #27. With the Academy heading to the west coast, issue #27 begins a two-parter with the Runaways. "l love the Runaways and I want to do the characters right. Hopefully I don't screw it up too badly." We've got more from about the Runaways and Avengers Academy here. Gage also said that X-23 joins the Academy crew in issue #23.

In other news, Alan Davis is drawing issue #6 of Captain America, while the panel remained rather coy about The Mighty Tanarus, implying that somehow, Thor and Tanarus are one and the same. A young fan pointed out that Tanarus is the actual Celtic god of thunder. The arc begins with issue #8 with Pasqual Ferry on art duties. Of Tanarus, Fraction said, "Wait until you see what Don Blake thinks of him."

Moving to Fraction's other title, Invincible Iron Man will feature an arc coming out of Fear Itself called "Demon." Fraction said the arc will deal with the fallout of Tony's drinking, and that he likes the idea of Tony's past coming back to haunt him. "If you were a cop and drinking on the job you wouldn't be able to be a cop anymore." He added that in addition to Zeke Stane and Mandarin coming back into play, he'd like to start to open the "toy chest" of villains. "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but things get worse for Tony Stark."

In Thunderbolts vs. Thunderbolts, the team's journey through time winds up taking them to the Marvel Universe circa 1997, meeting the original team. Brevoort said it's "one of the few books we've had without any substantial interruptions since the 90's." He continued to say that it was a joy to see the two eras come together and celebrate. Find more on Thunderbolts vs. Thunderbolts here.